Lost & Found

Feature Article from Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car

The Crowd of the Röhr
Tom Salzer recently found a photo of his father driving a pre-war roadster in Germany, and he's curious about its identity. "I believe the car was a Röhr, but have no identification except the radiator cap. Where can I locate a description of the Röhr logo?" Tom asks. "Attached is the best photo of the car I can locate. It was taken in Europe, likely Germany or Austria, probably in the mid-1930s. Any identification assistance you can provide will be appreciated."

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According to our Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile, Röhr was in business from 1927 through 1935 in Ober-Ramstadt, Germany. The company was founded by Hans Gustav Röhr, a World War I pilot and engine designer who would later become chief engineer at Adler. His cars were powered by a small straight-eight and featured independent suspension all the way around, via a clever arrangement of leaf springs. According to Beaulieu, a two-door "roadster-cabriolet" was added to the catalog in 1928. (An interesting footnote: After Hans Röhr's departure, the company was reorganized, and later produced about 1,700 copies of the Tatra T57 under license, badging them as "Röhr Juniors.")
So, readers--is this a Röhr? And if it isn't, what is it? You tell us, and we'll tell Tom.
Enigmatic Coupe
Reader Mark M. Windham thought we'd have no trouble identifying this car, so we were sorry to tell him that passing the photo around the office got us nothing more than a few glassy stares and a few mechanic's shrugs. Mark writes that his daughter found the photo on a blog that has since shut down. His diligent e-searching has yet to yield any clues, or to turn up another version of this photo. "I thought it might be a variation of a Kellison, but their website manager says that it is absolutely not a Kellison. I'm thinking some right-hand-drive country, but I have researched cars made in all of these countries listed on the net and still have nothing," Mark writes. "Steve, from Kellison, thought it might be a modified E-type and I looked closely at that, but to me it doesn't seem to fit."
We're going to side with Steve on this one--it sure looks like a Jaguar to us, especially around the tilt-forward bonnet and what we can see of the dashboard. It looks too well done to have been put together in someone's garage, but we've yet to find this car in any of the coachbuilder books in the Hemmings library. How about it, readers?
Trophy Case
When even the research library at the National Motor Trust at Beaulieu in the U.K. is stumped, it's fair to say you've got a real challenge on your hands. Reader Philip Jamison of West Chester, Pennsylvania, owns this handsome trophy, which he has so far been unable to identify. It bears the logo of Light Car and Cyclecar, a popular weekly magazine in the U.K., as well as the dates 1922-1936, each of which is followed by a name. Here's the list:
1922 - W.R.E. Honner
1923 - W.R.E. Honner
1924 - Dr. J.R. Dobson
1925 - G.G. Hazard
1926 - W.J. Barker
1927 - E.G. Grant
1928 - W. Ashley Oakes
1929 - A. Baker
1930 - N.L. Alexander
1931 - JA. S. Nicholls
1932 - N.G. Shoults
1933-34 - A.M. Alexander
1935 - R.H. Williams
1936 - A.M. Alexander
Philip reasonably assumes that this is a list of winners' names--but winners of what? A National Motor Trust researcher dug through the indexes of Light Car and Cyclecar for the years in question, and found no mention of the trophy. "There are various mentions of the Light & Cyclecar Challenge Cup that we have followed up, but this is a different trophy awarded by the magazine to holders of the Brooklands one-hour record in light cars. It was presented to a number of famous drivers over the years, people such as George Eyston. There is also mention of a Light Car & Cycle Car Silver Cup, which seems to have been presented to the winner of the 'Cyclecar Grand Prix' held at Brooklands in August 1928 and won by C. Lones and his wife in a Morgan. It may well have been presented on other occasions, although we have not been able to find a reference to this," the Beaulieu researcher writes. "Pictures of both trophies appear and neither looks anything like the one in your possession."

This article originally appeared in the May, 2011 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car.